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Biomaterials and emerging anticancer therapeutics: engineering the microenvironment

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 16, pages 56–66 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The microenvironment is increasingly recognized to have key roles in cancer, and biomaterials provide a means to engineer microenvironments both in vitro and in vivo to study and manipulate cancer. In vitro cancer models using 3D matrices recapitulate key elements of the tumour microenvironment and have revealed new aspects of cancer biology. Cancer vaccines based on some of the same biomaterials have, in parallel, allowed for the engineering of durable prophylactic and therapeutic anticancer activity in preclinical studies, and some of these vaccines have moved to clinical trials. The impact of biomaterials engineering on cancer treatment is expected to further increase in importance in the years to come.

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Figure 1: Creating new microenvironments in vitro and in vivo using biomaterials.
Figure 2: Biomaterials to create 3D in vitro human tumour models.
Figure 3: Biomaterial-based cancer immunotherapies.

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Acknowledgements

Relevant work in the authors' laboratory has been supported in part by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01 EB015498).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Luo Gu and David J. Mooney are at the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.,

    Luo Gu & David J. Mooney

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  1. Luo Gu
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Correspondence to David J. Mooney.

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Competing interests

D.J.M. has pending patent applications on biomaterial-based cancer vaccine systems which are reviewed in this article. L.G. declares no competing interests.

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Glossary

Adjuvants

Substances that modify the immune responses to an antigen.

Bolus vaccination

Injection of vaccine components suspended in solution.

Cellular immune responses

Responses that involve the activation of phagocytes and antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes in response to an antigen.

Elastic modulus

A measure of a substance's resistance to being deformed elastically under force, as calculated by the ratio of applied stress to the resulting strain in the substance.

Elasticity

The ability of solid materials to return to their original shape after being deformed.

Electrospinning

An approach to the fabrication of nano- or microscale fibres through electrostatic repulsion-induced formation of a jet of a polymer solution.

Humoral immune responses

Used here to indicate responses that involve the activation of B cells to secrete antibodies to a specific antigen.

Interpenetrating polymer network

(IPN). A polymer comprising two or more networks that are interlaced on a molecular scale but not covalently bonded to each other.

Microfluidics

Technology that processes or manipulates small volumes of fluids using channels with dimensions of tens to hundreds of micrometres.

Photolithography

The process of transferring patterns onto a substrate using light and light-sensitive chemicals.

Pluronic copolymer

A block copolymer of polyethylene glycol and polypropylene glycol.

Sacrificial templates

Templates fabricated using materials that can be removed later to form desired void structures inside a scaffold.

Soft lithography

A technique for fabricating or replicating structures using elastomeric stamps or moulds.

Virus-like particle

(VLP). A protein structure that mimics the organization of a virus but lacks the viral genome.

Viscoelasticity

A property of materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. Viscoelastic materials can flow under forces, but exhibit some elastic behaviour.

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Gu, L., Mooney, D. Biomaterials and emerging anticancer therapeutics: engineering the microenvironment. Nat Rev Cancer 16, 56–66 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc.2015.3

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